


SETI Never Expected This

by fenellaevangela



Category: The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 08:59:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2342678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fenellaevangela/pseuds/fenellaevangela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything seemed totally normal. Until it didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	SETI Never Expected This

**Author's Note:**

  * For [debirlfan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/debirlfan/gifts).



It was a normal day, really. Well, Penny had thought that it was a normal day. When she left for work that morning she was running a little late, sure, but she still managed to get there with a little time to spare. And it was just as busy at The Cheesecake Factory as it ever was for lunch on a Wednesday. She was pretty sure that people would have better things to do than cheat her out of a decent tip if anything interesting was going on, yet there she was, being drastically under-appreciated. Everything seemed totally normal.

***

Raj did _not_ think it was a normal day. In fact, he was starting to question whether anything was going to be normal ever again.

“Pick up the _phone_ , Leonard, come on . . .” 

A click came over the line. “Hello?” Leonard asked.

“Finally!” Raj exclaimed. “Leonard -”

“Raj? Why are you calling the lab landline? I thought this was the Dean. Dude, I'm in the middle of an experiment here.”

Raj tugged at his hair with his free hand. “This is more important! Leonard, you need to come up to my office _right now_.”

“What? No. I need to monitor this experiment.”

“Come on Leonard, trust me on this.”

Leonard sighed. “Can't you call Howard?”

“Dude, you will be _so pissed_ if Howard sees this before you.”

***

One of the other waitresses had to leave early, so the last half of Penny's shift was maybe a little busier than normal. Not that bad, really, but a little more hectic than it had to be, yeah. Still, when you worked in the service industry, you were used to little hiccups like that. She could handle it.

It wasn't like it was the end of the world or anything.

***

Leonard was less confident about the end of the world. The end of the world as he knew it, anyway.

“Oh my _god_ ,” he said. He looked at Raj, then back to Raj's desk, then back to Raj. “Oh my god!”

Raj nodded. “Dude, I know.”

“This is so much more important than my experiment. This makes my experiment look like, like . . .”

“It's okay, dude. Aren't you glad I called you before Howard?”

Leonard turned his attention back towards Raj's desk. “I'm still trying to decide if this is real or if I'm in a hyper-realistic virtual environment. But yeah, it's so cool that I got to see this first, Raj. Thanks.”

Raj smiled. “No problem. But I'd better call him now or he'll never let me hear the end of it.”

***

Howard's eyes were so wide while he stared at Raj's desk that it looked like they might pop out of their sockets. “Holy _shit_.”

“Shhh!” Raj hissed. “Howard, someone will hear you!”

Howard glared at him. “Someone will _hear_ me? We should be _telling_ someone. Like, like . . .”

“The FBI?” Leonard suggested. The other two men looked dubious. “Well, I don't know. NASA? Look, this isn't my area of expertise, here.”

“Well, it's not mine, either,” said Howard. Both of them looked at Raj.

“What?” Raj asked.

Howard shrugged. “Don't you know who to call about, uh, space stuff?”

“ _Space stuff_?” repeated Raj, incredulous. “I'm an astrophysicist, dude, what do you think we do?”

***

Penny's shift finished without any problems or customers holding her up, which, she would admit, was a little unusual. But it was a good sort of unusual, so she wasn't about to complain. She was ready to relax for the rest of the day, maybe watch a bad movie and re-do her chipped nail polish. She was just grabbing her purse and preparing to head out when her cellphone rang.

“Huh,” she said, looking at the caller ID. “I wonder why Leonard's calling from a landline?”

***

Penny had barely knocked on the door to Raj's office before it flung open and Leonard was ushering her inside.

“Okay, okay, I'm here,” she said. “I came over like you asked. What's the big secret?”

“Alright, prepare yourself,” Leonard warned. “Guys, move out of the way so Penny can see.”

The office was pretty small, but Howard and Raj managed to scoot around until Penny had an unencumbered view of Raj's desk. There was something on it, but after staring at it for a moment, Penny still wasn't really sure what it was.

“Guys, is this a nerd thing? Because you know I respect your hobbies, but I don't need to rush over after work to see it.” She leaned in a little closer, examining the details. “It does look pretty cool, but – oh my god!”

The thing on Raj's desk had something crawling on it. And in it, maybe? Penny wasn't sure, but she thought she was seeing doors or windows. The thing must be hollow.

“What the hell is this?” Penny asked. 

“It was Raj who found it,” Leonard explained. “Or, it found him, I guess.”

Raj nodded, then gestured for Penny to look closer again. He handed her a magnifying glass and she leaned in, watching the little figures crawl on top and inside of the object. They didn't look like bugs. They looked like . . . people.

When Leonard spoke again, his voice was full of awe. “We think it's a _spaceship_.”

***

Penny didn't even know where to start. Her day had been totally normal. So totally normal! And now there were maybe, possibly, _aliens_. She wasn't sure that she was ready for aliens. The guys might be ready for aliens, sure, but they spent their spare time thinking about aliens so they had a head start.

She suddenly realized something. “Wait, where's Sheldon?”

“Not in his office,” said Howard, shrugging. “We looked around but we couldn't find him. He's gonna be pissed he missed First Contact.”

Penny could hear the capital letters. “Did you try his cell?” she asked. She took hers out and went to make the call herself, but the battery was dead. “Huh?”

The three men held out their own cellphones, all of which were dead.

“We think it has something to do with ship,” Leonard explained. “Which sucks, because Howard's right. Sheldon is going to be _pissed_.”

Raj nodded.

Penny tucked her cell back into her purse, but she wasn't sure where to go from there. There was a tiny spaceship sitting three feet away from here with teeny tiny _aliens_ in it, and the four of them were just standing around. 

“Are we waiting for someone?” she asked.

“Oh, uh . . .” said Leonard, and reached up to scratch the back of his head. “Um . . .”

Howard rolled his eyes. “What Leonard's so elegantly trying to say is we couldn't decide who to call.”

“So we called you,” Leonard admitted.

Penny sighed. “Guys, it's sweet that you wanted to show me the aliens, but let's just call the cops, okay? The cops can decide who to hand this over to.”

“The cops will laugh us off the phone!” Howard said.

“Then we'll keep calling someone different until they believe us enough to check it out,” said Penny. “Come on, someone find a phone book or something.”

***

_”We're here tonight with Dr. Rajesh Koothrappali, the first person to encounter the aliens. First of all, doctor, thank you for coming.”_

_“Of course, Brian. Thank you for having me on your show.”_

_“Could you explain to our audience what exactly -”_

The television abruptly shut off and Penny braced herself for another round of Sheldon's moping.

“I cannot BELIEVE this!” Sheldon shouted, dropping the remote control on the coffee table. “A once in a lifetime opportunity!”

Penny sighed. “Come on, sweetie, it's no one's fault . . .”

“Alien lifeforms! Alien TECHNOLOGY! And I didn't even get to _see it_!”

“How were we supposed to know you were at an interfaculty meeting?” Howard said. “You never go to those things! We tried to find you!”

Sheldon stopped pacing the living room in his apartment and sat down in his spot. “I'm going to go down in history as the man who _didn't_ get to meet aliens. This is the worst.”

“It's not so bad,” Leonard said.

“Oh?”asked Sheldon. “And how is that?”

Leonard sighed. “Yeah, I got nothing.”


End file.
